America’s Flagship ‘Clean Coal’ Experiment Abandoned After 11 Years And $7.5 Billion

originally posted by: queenofswords

originally posted by: TruMcCarthy
Coal is already pretty clean. Good to see that they are trying to do even better. We need an "all of the above" energy strategy until we find a suitable replacement for fossil fuels. The more energy we have now, it will be faster and easier to find that alternative. Some people want to cut off their nose to spite their face, but that isn't going to get us any closer to legitimate renewable energy technology.

"All of the above" is the best strategy for now. Southern made a business decision.

This same company, Southern Company, received a $40 million dollar grant in Jan. 2016 to explore advanced nuclear reactor technologies:

ATLANTA, Jan. 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern Company today announced it has been awarded up to $40 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to explore, develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear reactor technologies through subsidiary Southern Company Services.

The effort will be managed through a new public-private partnership with TerraPower, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute and Vanderbilt University. Housed at the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the research will bolster the development of molten chloride fast reactors (MCFR), an advanced concept for nuclear generation.

www.prnewswire.com... 05098.html

Indeed...all of the above. Already there are environmental problems developing with so-called "green energy" alternatives.

Clean Energy's Dirty Little Secret

Excellent find and now we know why they really published this report.

originally posted by: rickymouse

originally posted by: kelbtalfenek

originally posted by: rickymouse
They can make scrubbers to take the carbon and other harmful products out of the coal plants. That money could have retrofitted every plant in the USA and lowered emissions. It was a waste of taxpayers money to give these experts money to do that.

The carbon has to go somewhere...the current solution is to bury it...still doesn't accomplish much, does it? It's just passing the buck so that another generation has to come up with a solution to our current problem. And the real solution is an alternative technology which relies on the sun as well...just not on dead critters from eons ago.

It is far better to bury that carbon than to bury the nuclear waste from the nuclear power plants.

Where did I say anything about nuclear? I didn't.

Alternative solutions include: wind, solar, tidal, geothermal...I don't think I've said anything about nuclear sir.

originally posted by: kelbtalfenek

originally posted by: rickymouse

originally posted by: kelbtalfenek

originally posted by: rickymouse
They can make scrubbers to take the carbon and other harmful products out of the coal plants. That money could have retrofitted every plant in the USA and lowered emissions. It was a waste of taxpayers money to give these experts money to do that.

The carbon has to go somewhere...the current solution is to bury it...still doesn't accomplish much, does it? It's just passing the buck so that another generation has to come up with a solution to our current problem. And the real solution is an alternative technology which relies on the sun as well...just not on dead critters from eons ago.

It is far better to bury that carbon than to bury the nuclear waste from the nuclear power plants.

Where did I say anything about nuclear? I didn't.

Alternative solutions include: wind, solar, tidal, geothermal...I don't think I've said anything about nuclear sir.

Solar panels need to be replaced after about twelve years, their manufacturing is not eco-friendly. If they could make them to last thirty years at a reasonable price, I would say yes, they are eco-friendly.

Tidal would be a good source of energy, but it's use can have some drawbacks. They can be torn apart by storms if not raised up high enough before hand.

Geo-thermal is good but here in the US north, it is not that feasible. In places with hot springs or volcano heat it is good.

Wind and water are some good ways, but water is much better in some cases, dams create areas for wildlife too. I have seen windmills in videos of tornadoes ripped to shreds. Also they do not withstand hurricanes that well.

I do not think natural gas is secure enough to build power plants in areas like here, one earth movement can shear the gas line and then the power is out all over. Natural gas acquisition and transport has a real lot of negative impact on our environment, I feel coal overall is less of an environmental impact than natural gas. The amount of area effected by fracking is way too much, risk assessment was thrown out the window with that.

a reply to: rickymouse

You do realize that there's more than one way to produce electricity from solar power, right? Currently they are working on ways to make the piezo-electric panels more efficient and longer lasting...but funding is needed for that, right?

The other way to produce electricity from solar is to use solar panels to heat water into steam and turn a turbine. This requires very little in the way of production other than panels to focus sunlight...and a device to keep those mirror panels aligned with the sun. But this is an alternative that can serve more than one purpose...it can also be used to heat water for floorboard heating, or entire house heating as well as producing electricity.

solar generator

While I agree with you that these technologies aren't perfected yet, neither was the internal combustion engine when we adapted it...and coal is still poisoning our land and our air and our water.

coal impacts

And I would like to add something...methane would be a wonderful source of energy ...and it will be abundant if, in fact, the perma-frost is melting, provided we can find a way to safely harvest it.
methane

a reply to: rnaa
There's no need to continue to waste money on the mythical clean coal. Trump will dismantle the regs that obama set in place and the power generation from coal will no longer be under attack. Win Win for everyone involved.

a reply to: kelbtalfenek

They are working on turning that carbon into diamonds. Which will eventually be used to replace the silicon in computer processors

originally posted by: kelbtalfenek
a reply to: rickymouse

You do realize that there's more than one way to produce electricity from solar power, right? Currently they are working on ways to make the piezo-electric panels more efficient and longer lasting...but funding is needed for that, right?

The other way to produce electricity from solar is to use solar panels to heat water into steam and turn a turbine. This requires very little in the way of production other than panels to focus sunlight...and a device to keep those mirror panels aligned with the sun. But this is an alternative that can serve more than one purpose...it can also be used to heat water for floorboard heating, or entire house heating as well as producing electricity.

solar generator

While I agree with you that these technologies aren't perfected yet, neither was the internal combustion engine when we adapted it...and coal is still poisoning our land and our air and our water.

coal impacts

And I would like to add something...methane would be a wonderful source of energy ...and it will be abundant if, in fact, the perma-frost is melting, provided we can find a way to safely harvest it.
methane

The businesses will find a way to make them better and more long lasting. As long as the government keeps their nose and money out of it. If the government feeds businesses money, there is no hurry, the sooner you finish, the sooner your paycheck ends. That is the problem. These things will get invented faster and better if the government is not paying or is involved. That power plant in this thread would have been up and running with a third of that much money being spent if the government had not funded it.

I have read and seen enough articles on Fracking to know that is not good on the environment. A lot worse than a clean burning coal plant could be.

"Clean" coal is conservative propaganda just like compassionate conservatism, abstinence only, personal responsibility, market solutions, marketplace of ideas and all the other lies they spout constantly. Only an idiot would believe that you could take the dirtiest substance in the world and make it clean.

The answer to the energy crisis in the West is immigration.
Less immigration reduces demand for power.
"Clean coal" is no more a misnomer than "Green Energy" - all power comes with a price tag ecologically speaking.
To me it makes sense to utilize whatever resources we have locally (sun in the US SW, wind in the Plains area, Tidal energy in New England) and have a diversity of generation sources.
Then we can do fair comparisons and see the cost and effects of each and make wiser decisions in the future about how to invest.

I still think we should burn coal, Appalachia needs the jobs and there's plenty of generation plants set up to burn it.
Why should the rest of world use coal and not the US? We're cutting our own throats in that regard.

Geothermal and tidal energy appear to be the most cost efficient and have the least impact on the environment so far as I can tell.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

I still think we should burn coal, Appalachia needs the jobs and there's plenty of generation plants set up to burn it.

Coal jobs ARE NOT coming back to Appalachia. They just aren't. There is no way in heck that Appalachian coal can compete with Wyoming coal, or Russian coal, or Australian coal. It just can't.

It is way beyond time to stop wasting time and dreams on an Appalachian Coal revival. It won't happen, and in the meantime Appalachia is losing the ability to remake its economy into something sustainable into the future.

Why should the rest of world use coal and not the US? We're cutting our own throats in that regard.

The rest of the world is phasing out its use of coal, why not the US? We're cutting our own throats in that regard.

China and India are often cited as the culprits in this regard. China has ZERO coal plant projects on the drawing board - ALL new projects are NON-COAL projects. China is not expanding its coal usage beyond the plants currently under construction.

India has ZERO coal plant projects on the drawing board - they have decided that the plants currently under construction will, when completed, meet their demand for the time being. The controversial mine in Queensland is an attempt to capture the cheapest coal for those existing plants into the future as other world coal supplies become harder to get and more expensive. Any new projects developed in the future will be non-coal. India is not expanding its coal usage beyond the plants currently under construction.

Nobody is turning off coal overnight - that is ludicrous - but the entire world is beginning to wind down its use of coal.

Even Australia, which will be the world's 2nd largest exporter of coal by next year is phasing out coal - because of market driven forces - even against strong Federal Government pressure and subsidies. The States are taking the lead on this because they are less under the control of the fossil fuel industry than the Feds. The current PM is under thrall of the extreme right wing of the party in order to maintain power, even though he is apparently personally on the 'reduce coal usage' side of the issue; so while he can't be seen to be actually pushing policy against coal, he doesn't really discourage the States moves either.

originally posted by: conscientiousobserver
a reply to: kelbtalfenek

They are working on turning that carbon into diamonds. Which will eventually be used to replace the silicon in computer processors

Won't really be necessary...because China will develop quantum computing before us...

originally posted by: rickymouse

originally posted by: kelbtalfenek
a reply to: rickymouse

You do realize that there's more than one way to produce electricity from solar power, right? Currently they are working on ways to make the piezo-electric panels more efficient and longer lasting...but funding is needed for that, right?

The other way to produce electricity from solar is to use solar panels to heat water into steam and turn a turbine. This requires very little in the way of production other than panels to focus sunlight...and a device to keep those mirror panels aligned with the sun. But this is an alternative that can serve more than one purpose...it can also be used to heat water for floorboard heating, or entire house heating as well as producing electricity.

solar generator

While I agree with you that these technologies aren't perfected yet, neither was the internal combustion engine when we adapted it...and coal is still poisoning our land and our air and our water.

coal impacts

And I would like to add something...methane would be a wonderful source of energy ...and it will be abundant if, in fact, the perma-frost is melting, provided we can find a way to safely harvest it.
methane

The businesses will find a way to make them better and more long lasting. As long as the government keeps their nose and money out of it. If the government feeds businesses money, there is no hurry, the sooner you finish, the sooner your paycheck ends. That is the problem. These things will get invented faster and better if the government is not paying or is involved. That power plant in this thread would have been up and running with a third of that much money being spent if the government had not funded it.

I have read and seen enough articles on Fracking to know that is not good on the environment. A lot worse than a clean burning coal plant could be.

I think we are on the same page mostly. We may differ a tiny bit in the details, but overall we're in agreement here.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals


I still think we should burn coal, Appalachia needs the jobs and there's plenty of generation plants set up to burn it.
Why should the rest of world use coal and not the US? We're cutting our own throats in that regard.

The coal industry was the driving force that built this country. Burning coal to fuel the fires of industrialism, and fan the flames of capitalism. The side effect of which has been acid rain, poisoning the environment and filling our skies with sulfur. As a country, our awareness of these side-effects has broadened, and the long term prospects of continued coal burning are something that the majority of the citizenry don't want to happen.

As for the jobs question: The coal industry directly employs less than 80K people. Whereas Renewable energy is creating jobs at more than 12 times the rate of the rest of the economy. source

How are we cutting our own throat by preparing for a better future?

originally posted by: rnaa

I repeat for the record, that I am sure that that $7.5million wasn't totally wasted. I am sure a lot of very good science got done and a lot of very good technology got invented, tested, and its implementation will continue to benefit. I am also perhaps a little tough on CCS. After all Mother Earth has made it work just fine for something like 3.5 billion years. If only we had 3.5 billion years to get it right.

The problem is you can't rush technology. Obama thought that he could dump 10s of billions into the renewable energy industry to fix all our problems and it all went to waste. We replaced the extremely environmentally unfriendly horse with the car and we will replace the gas car with the electric car in the very near future, but it is not something that can be forced into place...price to performance will always win out the day either way.

If you have an electric car that can only get 100 miles on a charge and takes 8 hours to recharge while costing more than a gas car it will not replace, but if I had a 400 mile, 20 min recharge, 0-60 in 4.0 seconds electric car, and it cost about the same as a gas car, the roads would empty quickly of gas cars...hehe

Same logic applies with solar panels and many other renewable energy resources.

India plans nearly %60 of electricity capacity from non-fossil fuels by 2027

Japan’s Softbank has committed to invest $20bn (£16.2bn) in the Indian solar energy sector, in conjunction with Taiwanese company Foxconn and Indian business group Bharti Enterprises.

In September the largely French state-owned energy company EDF announced it would invest $2bn in Indian renewable energy projects, citing the country’s enormous projected demand and “fantastic” potential of its wind and solar radiation.

Adani opened the world’s largest solar plant in Tamil Nadu earlier this year, and in October the energy conglomerate Tata announced that it would aim to generate as much as 40% of its energy from renewable sources by 2025.

Buckley said India’s “absolutely transformational” forecast was also driven by technological advancements that have led to the price of solar energy falling by 80% in the past five years.

I posted this in a thread a while ago on renewing coal mines and re-instating coal plants in the States.New coal mine opened under Trump
The international investment, employment and development potential of renewable and alternate energy sources is astronomical. The chance of being left behind should be enough to diminish America's redevolped archaic energy production.

a reply to: rnaa

If there were a big natural disaster, all natural gas distribution in the center of the country could be effected. The natural gas plants are not that stable of a source of power. Our power plants up here are coal, but they are switching over a lot to gas now, that is kind of risky, especially when a major gas line break will shut down power here for quite a while. We have lines in, but they could not make up for much. So in winter, you lose your gas furnace and you lose electricity. You can't even use electric heaters to heat your house so the pipes don't freeze. Seems to me that is far from secure. Yet there are salesmen out there who said that buying those huge expensive gas generators is better. And our people believed them. Here in the summer, they haul all the coal for the year, those coal plants are far more secure than what our people are being told.

originally posted by: rnaa
Just think what the renewable energy industry could have done with that 7.5 billion dollars.

Piss it away as they have already done with the many billions of tax payer dollars that have been given to them in return for little more than unfilled promises of rainbows, farts, and magic beans, probably.
www.forbes.com...

Over the past five years alone, the federal government spent $150 billion on solar energy and other renewable energy projects. Preferable tax treatment given to solar and other alternative electricity initiatives cost Americans nearly $9 billion annually, according to the IRS. Billions of dollars have been blown on solar boondoggles—Solyndra being just one of them—and more boondoggles are in the pipeline (so to speak), since nothing encourages the venture capitalists at the Department of Energy like failure.

We're wasting way too much money chasing after paranoid delusions like climate change. Just burn the damn coal with coal scrubbers, a technology which does work, installed in the stacks and let's get back to an era in which money spent equals a benefit rather than a waste.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Obama thought that he could dump 10s of billions into the renewable energy industry to fix all our problems and it all went to waste.

Well, actually, I think you are talking about that technology investment fund that was established by a Republican Congress and was signed into law by George W. Bush are you not?. Obama wasn't responsible for that investment fund you are talking about, except that he was, of course, charged with implementing it as Congress intended.

It that is what you are talking about, that fund was designed by Congress on purpose to invest in high risk technology research and development and was NEVER expected to 'make a profit'. In the end, it did in fact make a profit, and encouraged a lot of very good technology and companies to exploit that technology along the way.

Not all companies were winners, of course. One such company was criticized unmercifully because President Obama made an example of them as a model company with a great product under development that was being ignored by the 'normal' investor community when the investment was granted. And the President was right. Their product was top of the line and worked exactly as they hoped it would (it was a cylindrical solar collector that improved the efficiency of solar collectors). But sometimes technical superiority isn't enough (Sony Betamax says Hi! - and what ever happened to the Palm Treo?).

Why Obama gets plugged for South Korea driving the cost of solar collectors so low that the new technology isn't cost effective completely escapes me. That technology will turn up in the future somewhere.

I don't consider one cent of that money wasted, even if not all investments paid off. That was the expectation going in, even to the point that the profit that the scheme made was an extremely pleasant surprise.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6

Piss it away as they have already done with the many billions of tax payer dollars that have been given to them in return for little more than unfilled promises of rainbows, farts, and magic beans, probably....

We're wasting way too much money chasing after paranoid delusions like climate change. Just burn the damn coal with coal scrubbers, a technology which does work, installed in the stacks and let's get back to an era in which money spent equals a benefit rather than a waste.

$150 billion over 5 years? $30 billion per year?. That is ludicrous. Where could this Forbes author possibly come up with a number like that. Hmmm.

Doctor Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of recent subsidy level reports: Energy Subsidies: Allocation of subsidies in the United States

On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, broken down as follows:

Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent)
Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent)
Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent)
Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent)

In addition, Dinan testified that the U.S. Department of Energy would spend an additional $3.4 billion on financial Support for energy technologies and energy efficiency, broken down as follows:

Energy efficiency and renewable energy: $1.7 billion (51 percent)
Nuclear energy: $0.7 billion (22 percent)
Fossil energy research & development: $0.5 billion (15 percent)
Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy: $0.3 billion (8 percent)
Electricity delivery and energy reliability: $0.1 billion (4 percent)[27]

A 2011 study by the consulting firm Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI)[28] estimated the total historical federal subsidies for various energy sources over the years 1950–2010. The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period....

A 2009 study by the Environmental Law Institute[29] assessed the size and structure of U.S. energy subsidies in 2002–08. The study estimated that subsidies to fossil fuel-based sources totaled about $72 billion over this period and subsidies to renewable fuel sources totaled $29 billion. The study did not assess subsidies supporting nuclear energy.

The three largest fossil fuel subsidies were:

Foreign tax credit ($15.3 billion)
Credit for production of non-conventional fuels ($14.1 billion)
Oil and Gas exploration and development expense ($7.1 billion)

The three largest renewable fuel subsidies were:

Alcohol Credit for Fuel Excise Tax ($11.6 billion)
Renewable Electricity Production Credit ($5.2 billion)
Corn-Based Ethanol ($5.0 billion)

'Alcohol Credit for Fuel Excise Tax' and Corn-Based Ethanol are not honest 'renewable' fuel subsidies. They are Agri-business subsidies that have nothing to do with renewable energy.

In the United States, the federal government has paid US$74 billion for energy subsidies to support R&D for nuclear power ($50 billion) and fossil fuels ($24 billion) from 1973 to 2003. During this same timeframe, renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency received a total of US $26 billion...

Critics allege that the most important subsidies to the nuclear industry have not involved cash payments, but rather the shifting of construction costs and operating risks from investors to taxpayers and ratepayers, burdening them with an array of risks including cost overruns, defaults to accidents, and nuclear waste management. Critics claim that this approach distorts market choices, which they believe would otherwise favor less risky energy investments.[32]...

A 2012 study authored by researchers at the Breakthrough Institute, Brookings Institution, and World Resources Institute[34] estimated that between 2009 and 2014 the federal government will spend $150 billion on clean energy through a combination of direct spending and tax expenditures. Renewable electricity (mainly wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and tidal energy) will account for the largest share of this expenditure, 32.1%, while spending on liquid biofuels will account for the next largest share, 16.1%. Spending on multiple and other forms of clean energy, including energy efficiency, electric vehicles and advanced batteries, high-speed rail, grid and transportation electrification, nuclear, and advanced fossil fuel technologies, will account for the remaining share, 51.8%. Moreover, the report finds that absent federal action, spending on clean energy will decline by 75%, from $44.3 billion in 2009 to $11.0 billion in 2014.

Ah-ha! there is the $150billion over 5 years number that the Forbes article is discussing.

First off, "liquid biofuels" is NOT a 'clean' technology, and the subsidies granted for development and price support are subsidies to farmers, to keep their votes happy, and more importantly to Big Agribusiness to keep their checks flowing into party campaign coffers. It is not a serious, honest attempt at renewable energy. There isn't enough corn to replace petroleum in any meaningful way, unless we stop feeding people altogether.

Also, many of those technologies being 'subsidized' are not renewable energy related. Spending on high-speed rail is not spending on renewable energy and that other 'efficiency' stuff is 51% of that total. So we are talking maybe 32% of that $150 billion or around $50 billion over 5 years - and that number is more in line with those other reports up above say.

The Forbes author is simply talking industry propaganda at you. He says $150 billion and doesn't say what the break down is and he didn't mention that that number was driven so high due to the economic stimulus - and that dollar value included expenditures unrelated to renewable energy. The efficiency projects, grid stabilization, and public transport projects which are important and valuable initiatives no matter what the energy source might be. He also doesn't tell you that that level of subsidy was going to 'sunset' along with the rest of the stimulus spending (unless Congress voted to continue it, of course).

Guess what, your author has a agenda and he is willing to leave out important information to sell that agenda to you. Sad.

a reply to: rnaa

Since we know C02 is not making the temperature go up, whats the problem with coal?